A MILD SEPTEMBER morning. A man no longer young strolls thoughtfully
on a narrow footpath along a former railway line. Noises tell of a nearby
motorway but brambles, elders and hawthorns on each side hide all but
the straight empty path ahead until he sees a small clearing on his
right. Two girls sit here at the foot of an old telegraph pole. He pauses,
gazing up at the top of the pole, examining its cracked grey timber,
cross-pieces with insulators like small white jam pots from which dangle
broken wires. He has noticed the girls are in their teens, look surly
and depressed, wear clumsy thick-soled boots and baggy military trousers
from which rise pleasantly slim bodies. One says crossly, 'What are
you staring at?'
'At
the wires of that sad sad pole!' says the man without lowering his eyes,
'A few years ago they carried messages from this land of ours to a world-wide
commercial empire.'
'A few years? It was yonks ago,'
says the girl contemptuously. Without looking straight at her the man
glimpses a stud piercing her lower lip and one through the wing of a
nostril. He says, 'Yonks? Yes. I suppose this pole was defunct before
you were born.'
He continues looking up at it until
the other girl stands, stretches her arms, pretends to yawn, says 'I'll
better away, and goes off through the bushes. Her companion still
sits as she did before the stroller arrived.
A minute later he takes a folded
newspaper from his coat pocket, unfolds it, lays it on the grass where
the departed girl sat, then sits carefully down with hands clasped round
the knee of a bent leg. Looking sideways at the girl (who still pretends
to ignore him) he says quietly, 'I must ask you a difficult question
about the eff word. Does it shock or annoy you? I don't mean
when used as a swear word, I hate swearing, I mean when used as a word
for the thing ... the act lovers do together. Eh?'
After allowing her a moment to reply
he speaks briskly as if they had reached an agreement.
'Now I fully realize that a lovely
young woman like you -' (she sneers) '- don't sneer, has no wish to
eff with a boring old fart like me in bushes beside a derelict railway
line. But I suppose you are unemployed and need money?'
'Fucking right I do!' she cries.
'Don't swear. This is an unfair
world but I am no hypocrite, I am glad I have money you need. We should
therefore discuss how much I am willing to pay for what you are prepared
to do. I promise that a wee chat will probably give all the satisfaction
I need. I have never been greatly enamoured with the down-to-earth,
flat-out business of effing.'
'Ten pounds!' says the girl, facing
him at last. He nods and says, 'That is not unreasonable.'
'Ten pounds now! Nothing without
cash up front!' she says, holding out a hand. From a wallet within his
coat he gives her bank notes.
'Thanks,' she says, pocketing them
and standing up, 'Cheerio.'
He looks up at her wistfully. She
says, 'You're too weird for me as well as too old and you're right.
This is an unfair world.'
She goes off through the bushes.
He sighs and sits there, brooding.
Then hears a rustling of leaves.
The other girl emerges and stands watching him. He ignores her until
she says, 'I didnae really go away. I was listening all the time behind
that bush I don't think you're weird. Not dangerous-weird. You're just
... funny.'
'Name?' he asks drearily.
'Davida.'
'I thought the Scottish custom of
making daughters' names out of fathers' names had died out.'
'It came back. What's your name?'
'I'm giving nothing else away today,
Davida. Don't expect it.'
But he is looking at her. She grins
cheerily back until he shrugs and pats the grass beside him. She hunkers
down slightly further away, hugging her legs with both arms and asking
brightly, 'What were you going to say to Sharon?'
'You too want cash from me.'
'Aye, some, but not as much as Sharon.
Forget about money. Say what you like, I won't mind.'
He stares at her, opens his mouth,
swallows, shuts his eyes tight and mutters 'Bigpocketswithbuttonedflaps.'
'Eh?'
'Big,' he explains deliberately,
'Pockets. With. Buttoned. Flaps. At last I have said it.'
'They turn you on?' says Davida,
looking at her pockets in a puzzled way.
'Yes!' he says defiantly, 'Because
violence is sexy! These pockets are military pockets with room for ammunition
clips and grenades and iron rations. On women they look excitingly .
. . deliciously . . . unsuitable.'
'Yes, I suppose that's why they're
in fashion, but they're nothing to get excited about.'
'I enjoy being excited about them,'
he groans, covering his face with his hands.
'Were you a school teacher?'
'You'll get nothing more out of
me, Davida ... Why do you think I was a teacher?'
'Because you're bossy as well as
polite. Yes, and teachers have to pretend to be better than normal folk
so they're bound to go a bit daft when they retire. What did you want
to do with Sharon's pockets that was worth ten quid?'
He looks obstinately away from her.
'Did you want to stick your hands
in them like THIS?' she giggles, putting her hands in her
pockets, 'Did you want to fumble about in them like THIS?'
'No more dirty talk!' orders a very
tall thin youth emerging from the bushes, 'How dare you molest this
young lady with obscene and suggestive insinuations?'
'ME molest HER? Ha!' cries the man
and lies back flat on the grass with hands clasped behind head. He thinks
it wise to look as relaxed and unchallenging as possible for he is now
greatly outnumbered. Beside the tall youth is a small youth who looks
more menacing because his face is expressionless, his head completely
bald, and beside him stands Sharon saying scornfully, 'Big pockets with
buttoned flaps!'
'You should have left us alone a
bit longer,' grumbles Davida, 'He was starting to enjoy himself.'
'He was starting to enjoy his antisocial
fetishistic propensities with a lassie young enough to be his grand-daughter!'
cries the tall youth fiercely.
'Molesting two lassies in fifteen
minutes!' says Sharon, 'We've witnesses to prove it. He's got to pay
us for that.'
The man says, 'I've paid you already.'
'That ... is not an attitude ...
I would advocate if you want to stay in one piece,' says the tall boy,
slowly taking from a big pocket in his trousers a knife with a long
blade. The smaller, more dangerous-looking youth says 'Hullo Mr McCorquodale.'
The man sits up to see him better
and asks, 'How's the family Shon?'
'Dad isnae out yet but Sheila's
doing well in TV rentals. She went to Australia.'
'Yes, Sheila was the smartest of
you. I advised her to leave Scotland.'
'I KNEW he was a teacher,' says
Davida smugly.
'You stupid fucking cretin!' the
tall boy yells at the shorter one, 'If you'd kept out the way we could
have rolled him for all he's got, buggered off and nothing would have
happened! We don't live round here, we've no police record, nobody could
have found us! But now he knows you we'll have to evade identification by cutting
off his head and hands and burying them miles away!'
He saws the air wildly with the
knife. The girls' faces express disgust. The smaller youth says mildly
'Don't do that to old Corky, he wasnae one of the worst.'
'Not one of the worst?' cries the
ex-teacher jumping lightly to his feet, 'Did I not make my gym a living
hell for you and your brothers? I also advise YOU,' he tells the taller
youth, 'to put that knife away. You obviously don't know how to handle
it.'
'And you do?' says the tall boy
sarcastically.
'Yes son, I do. I belong to the
generation that did National Service. Your combat training is all from
television and video games. When eighteen I was taught armed AND unarmed
combat by professional killers in the British army. Davida! Sharon!
Shon! Persuade your friend to pocket that bread knife. Tell him he's
a fine big fellow but I'm stronger than I look and if he's really interested
in dirty fighting I can teach him tricks that'll have the eyes popping
out of his head. Tell him I gave Sharon all the money I carry so if
he needs more he'll have to come home with me.
And McCorquodale smiles wistfully
at the tall youth's combat trousers.

This electronic version of "Big Pockets with Buttoned
Flaps" appears in The Barcelona Review with kind permission of
the author. It was first published in New Writing 9, Vintage,
in association with The British Council, 2000. Book ordering available
through amazon.co.uk

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further without the author's express permission. Please see our conditions of use.

Alasdair
Gray was born in Glasgow in 1934. He trained at the art school
there and has lived mainly by painting, writing and, since 1981, book
design, mostly of his own books. His novels include Lanark,1982 Janine,The Fall of Kelvin Walker,Something
Leather,McGrotty and Ludmilla, Poor Things and A History
Maker. His other books are, Unlikely Stories Mostly,Lean
Tales (with Agnes Owens and James Kelman), Ten Tales Tall and
True and Mavis Belfrage and Four Shorter Tales; a poetry
collection, Old Negatives; a play, Working Legs (for People
Without Them), and Why Scots Should Rule Scotland1992
and 1997; and The Anthology of Prefaces.